Interesting little presentation.

I recall that Austrian economist and anarcho-monarchist Hans-Hermann Hoppe got into some controversy as a professor talking about time preference and homosexuality due to technical inability to reproduce (outside of adoption). The discussion of time preference is supposed to be neutral, or that is at least how Zimbardo ends his presentation. But given that so much of our culture values wealth, its generation and hoarding, we tend to assume that a future oriented perspective is "superior." Certainly Zimbardo's discussion of present hedonistic time preference among our youth as a disaster has some clear moral connotations.

Zimbardo has a book out, "The Time Paradox" that seems to fall under the "self-help" genre. I don't know what could be gotten out of the book that the video doesn't provide, as the idea itself is rather simple and easy to grasp. It's the differences in how people develop these time preferences that would offer some interest to political theorists. Anyone who doesn't plan would be unlikely to push for long term political change, or even be well equipped to respond to long term challenges.

Vincent Ocasla, a young architecture student from the Philippines, has designed the perfect city for totalitarianism in Sim City 3000 with the largest possible population that sustains itself for 50,000 years. Impressive, but pretty darn scary.

More on Vincent's creation:

There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle - this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.

. . .

Health of the sims was not a priority, relative to the main objective. I could have enacted several health ordinances which would have increased the life expectancy, but I decided not to for practical reasons. It shows that by only focusing on one objective, one may end up neglecting, or resorting to sacrificing, other important elements. Similarly, [in the real world] if we make maximizing profits as the absolute objective, we fail to take into consideration the social and environmental consequences.

Andrew Gelman at FiveThirtyEight has a post up looking at the ideologies of both the general populace and partisans in the various states. These sorts of posts pop up from time to time and the trend is always the same. For the most part, social and economic views are correlated but not always as strongly as one might expect. But it's mildly interesting, so check it out.

Why does total war (by which I mean the intention to totally debilitate the enemy and possibly force an unconditional surrender) seem to be the norm in military conflicts these days? Most prominently, there is the Israeli siege on Gaza, where all economic development is effectively prohibited out of fear that someone might make a weapon. Throughout the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Israeli state effectively demands unconditional surrender -- insisting that Palestinians cease all attacks before the Israeli state lifts martial law or considers negotiations. On the flip side, many Palestinians and their allied states refuse to recognize Israel at all until all disputes are resolved.

We might be tempted to think that the Zionist conflict is a special case, but the attitude of total war seems to permeate the American approach to war also. It's was the strategy of the Civil War and both World Wars (with the CW and WWII involving unconditional surrender). The Cold War was infused with the mentality that we would always be fighting the USSR, even if there was never a  direct confrontation between the two armies.

For a while we may have drifted from that policy -- for instance, the first war between the US and Iraq ended with the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and a cease-fire agreement. However, over time it developed into a drive for regime change, culminating in an invasion with an unconditional surrender. The invasion of Afghanistan seemed to rest on a similar premise--that we could not be safe as long as the Taliban had any power. Even if the USA did not have to dedicate all resources to these wars, many people spoke as though it would be appropriate to do so if that were required to defeat the enemy.

 Why do we embrace total war so readily? I can only offer speculation (I'd bet that Robot.Economist would have some insight on this). Is it a common trait of humans to seek the absolute destruction of their enemies? Do wars simply escalate until they become total wars? Is it an intentional propaganda technique of war leaders trying to create widespread support for the war ("we must destroy them or they will destroy us!") Is it a strategy to intimidate would-be opponents and maintain hegemony? Is it inevitable in ideological conflicts? Is total war a new attitude that has seeped into American culture? Is it reinforced by nuclear weapons and international terrorism?

The idea that our enemies must be absolutely debilitated probably causes wars to drag on longer than they might otherwise, and end with much greater destruction. The demand for Japan's unconditional surrender left Truman with only two choices -- nuke their cities or invade the mainland. This mentality also seems to be the foundation of Bush's doctrine of preventive war-- that any ability to harm the USA is an unacceptable threat.

Within the framework of total war, there is no such thing as a proportional response to a threat or an injury. As such, I can only see two stable outcomes arising from this strategy; either total dominance of one state or mutual annihilation. There may be an opening for a balance of Mutually Assured Destruction, but that seems possible only in a fundamentally conservative and unchanging political order, which does not seem possible.

I hope that we can find some way to de-escalate the conflicts around the world. I hope that Americans pay more heed to Benjamin Franklin's virtue of moderation: "Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.".

 

 

 

 

Congress is preparing to take up an Obama Administration proposal to establish a Small Business Lending Fund to help meet "unmet" small business demand for credit. The problem is that there's not really a supply-side problem with credit for small businesses right now, outside of construction and real estate. So we'd basically be throwing more money at small businesses at a subsidized rate, which is just going to help those who are already doing just fine. There are industry-specific problems facing the economy that need to be addressed. Sadly, Congress seems to be looking at a "solution" for that too.

Loan guarantees for homebuilders?!

I daresay that there are homebuilders out there who deserve loans they can’t get. But the same is true of other businesses too — businesses which create the vibrant sectors of tomorrow’s economy that ideally we really want to encourage, rather than crowd out. Banks aren’t going to lend more if this bill passes: they’re just going to shunt their lending from non-guaranteed sectors to homebuilding. And that can’t be good for the long-term health of the economy.

As for the unemployment problem, there’s no doubt that we want the people who have lost their jobs in the homebuilding sector to find new jobs as quickly as possible. But do we want those new jobs to be in the homebuilding sector? Not really. If we’re going to encourage job creation, let’s try to do it in areas of the economy which will help drive exports rather than imports, and which underpin a genuinely strong economy.

Actually, the problems facing homebuilders are industry-specific and most other small businesses are having their credit needs met. I don't know if one or both of these proposals will pass so it's hard to figure out the specific impact they would have, but neither one would have a meaningful positive impact. There are clear problem in trying to respond to the ongoing economic malaise with proposals to just prop up the industries that brought us down in the first place.

The difference between Germany and Spain, when you get down to it, is that Germans work for companies which provide goods and services that the rest of the world wants. In doing so, they make good money, which they save up. That’s how they became rich. The Spanish, by contrast, have massive unemployment, and most of the country’s GDP growth in recent years has come from the construction industry. Their main export is tourism, if that counts as an export, and the main way that Spaniards have become rich in recent years is by sitting back and watching the value of their real estate grow exponentially.

The U.S., going forwards, needs to be less like Spain and more like Germany. So let’s not subsidize housing. That way lies fiscal disaster.

Richard Florida has been calling this the Great Reset and compares it to how we recovered from past periods of economic woes. Over the next thirty years American consumption habits and lifestyles will shift and we'll see new industries develop and grow. I don't think we'll go back to the system in which ever rising home values and overleveraged credit fueled a consumer craze. If we do we'll probably have another burst bubble during a time of even greater fiscal crisis. That's not a good combination.

Matt Ridley’s "The Rational Optimist" is out and although its sitting on my desk I haven't managed to find the time to start reading it yet. But I find Mike Gibson's review of the book a good place to start on reflecting about Ridley's underlining premise of the book that trade and specialization are the key factors in prosperity. But here I've often pointed out that trade and specialization will only get you so far, you also need innovation and new ideas. You need creativity. And these are two different things. The case behind trade, specialization, division of labor, and the greater economic wealth it creates is pretty solid. But the case behind what creates creativity and innovation is weaker because we haven't pinned down what makes one society more creative than another and how that translates into innovation and economic growth. Some can argue that it's cultural tolerance, but that's still a weak case that is only starting to build a movement behind it.

On the other hand, perhaps the case that trade and specialization are limited is overdone. Yglesias notes that the "miracle" that is China's economy is still largely attributed to specialization and changes in the economy that don't depend on innovation.

The basic story is that living standards ultimate derive from productivity, and there are two ways for an undeveloped country like China to obtain productivity growth. One is to simply shift people out of a low-productivity sector (like farming in China) and into a higher productivity sector (in China, factory labor). Another would be to actually raise the in-sector productivity by getting better at farming or manufacturing or what have you. In the specific case of China, it’s crucial to note that the productivity wedge between sweatshops and rice paddies is enormous which strongly suggests that a huge amount of what China’s achieved has been achieved through the former method. And with agriculture still employing over 35 percent of the Chinese labor force, there’s a great deal more China can achieve through this path. And it’s not a path I think should be slighted. Growth achieved through this method isn’t mythical—the higher living standards are very real. What is mythical, however, is the sense of the miraculous. For the reasons Krugman lays out, there’s nothing miraculous about this and there are real limits to how far you can go with it.

Nancy Pelosi may think the purpose of public policy is to pursue the values of Jesus Christ, to make "the word flesh," but, in politics, the word made flesh is the gun. I know the "liberalism" mission statement includes the statement that "views the Democratic Party as the last, best hope for liberty," but as I keep pointing out, the Democratic Establishment does not represent the views of the more socially liberal base. I'm not interested in living in a place where the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin are fighting it out for their vision of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. And frankly, if the so-called "Kingdom of Heaven" is anything like the American empire, I choose Hell.

I don't think there's any rational explanation of Israeli's behavior of the last few years. Demographic trends in Israel have fostered a radically xenophobic, racist, and nationalist right-wing approach to politics and an overly militant and aggressive treatment of the Palestinians. They are beyond the pale of reason. It would be utterly ridiculous if it weren't so deadly. It's like watching a nation run by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, but with the oppression and violence of apartheid South Africa--and worse.

Over the last few decades, Israel has been allowed to live by its own set of rules because it was seen as a bastion of western liberalism and democracy in the Middle East. An oasis in the desert, if you will. Israel's noncompliance with the NPT undermines the Obama Administration's efforts to discourage Iran from developing nuclear weapons and avoid a domino of Sunni regimes like Egypt or Saudi Arabia developing nuclear capabilities as well. Israel's defense, unchanged for years, is that it is the region's only democracy, which I guess puts Turkey in Europe and downgrades whatever success Iraq has made in recent years.

Israel is still operating with the Cold War mentality that it can do whatever it wants, like developing a secret nuclear weapons pact with apartheid South Africa. But in Europe and the United States, the Jewish diaspora has embraced the values of liberalism and equality to an extent that they no longer agree with a simple nationalist or Zionist defense of Israel. American Jews lean left, tend to be secularists, and support a more consistent application of human rights than a simple "Israel Good, Everyone Else Bad." Peter Beinart has chronicled this shift in his recent work that represents just the iceberg of changes in American Jewish about Israel.

Beinart himself represents not only this shift, but a shift in some of the "Organizational Kids" that David Brooks wrote about in analyzing trends in the types of people who get appointed to the Supreme Court.

About a decade ago, one began to notice a profusion of Organization Kids at elite college campuses. These were bright students who had been formed by the meritocratic system placed in front of them. They had great grades, perfect teacher recommendations, broad extracurricular interests, admirable self-confidence and winning personalities.

If they had any flaw, it was that they often had a professional and strategic attitude toward life. They were not intellectual risk-takers. They regarded professors as bosses to be pleased rather than authorities to be challenged. As one admissions director told me at the time, they were prudential rather than poetic.

Beinart has had a similar career background. As a supporter of the Iraq War and a general liberal-leaning hawk during the Bush Administration, he was the sort of centrist liberal that was supposed to be respectable under the conventional wisdom that had developed over the previous decades. But what has actually happened with Beinart? He's become increasingly disillusioned with the conventional wisdom that was handed down about what was necessary for America to be tough and strong on national defense. His latest book is a history of American hubris. How many other ruling elites today even think about America having hubris?

The conventional wisdom regarding Israel is being overturned, aided by Israel's own ever more extremist actions. Today, any opponent of actions by Israeli's right-wing government is cast as anti-Semitic. Any expression of support for the 1.5 million Palestinians living in poverty in Gaza is attacked as coddling terrorist Hamas. All of this doesn't bode well for Israel to survive as a democratic state.

Many upper-middle class drug warriors like to believe that illegal drug use is one of the dirty habits of the poor -- perhaps treating it as a convenient explanation for why they are poor. Consistent with such prejudices, American prisons are full of people from low SES backgrounds, convicted on drug charges. However, the National Survey on Drug Use does not show any clear correlation between drug use and the components of SES measures (e.g. formal education).

This implies that many people are able to live pretty normal lives despite illegal drug use -- both past and ongoing. By personally disproving the slanderous propaganda put out by drug warriors (that drug users are shiftless troublemakers), these drug users may believe that they are immune to the risks associated with drug use.

Clinton B. McCracken has expounded on this attitude in his recent essay/memoir called "Intellectualization of drug abuse". The original essay requires a subscription to JAMA, but some of the core points are covered by the NY Times.

McCracken, an addiction researcher, first provides some background -- health care professionals use illegal drugs at rates that are at least as high as the general population. He then reports on his own experience with using illegal drugs. He smoked pot daily, even cultivating a little for personal use. He and his wife occasionally injected opiates that they acquired through international pharmacies. Everything seemed to be going fine until his wife died from injecting a contaminated preparation of opiates.

Following her death, the cops searched McCracken's house, discovering his plants and arresting him on felony drug charges. He was able to avoid substantial jail time, but being a Canadian citizen, he faces deportation from the USA, and future restrictions on international travel. If this weren't enough to destroy his career, many employers will hesitate before hiring someone with a felony criminal record.

Anyone familiar with the political rehabilitation process for busted drug users will recognize this essay as one of those mea culpas that tend to win some forgiveness from the authorities. Throughout the entire essay, McCracken emphasizes the dangers of illegal drug use (particularly, the dangers of injecting drugs), and his own blindness to those dangers. If this essay helps any individual adjust his drug use to avoid the loss that McCracken has suffered, then it is a noble endeavor.

However, if we read between the lines with a mind to public policy, we can quickly realize that all of McCracken's suffering can be traced to the drug war. His wife died because of contaminated drugs -- the risk of such contamination greatly increases when the government prevents the free flow of information in a market. The rest of his troubles are the direct result state action. Consequently, I don't place the blame on McCracken any more than I blame the victim of a mugging for taking a walk on a quiet street at night. The blame for ruining these two lives falls squarely on the drug warriors.

The most recent FDL Book Salon features Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.
—FROM THE NEW JIM CROW

Little Alex has text and video transcript of Alexnader's recent appearance on Democracy Now.

In the Salon introduction, Paul Street writes:

Alexander’s argument is deftly developed over six highly readable and richly informed chapters that: review the historical record of racialized social control in North American history from the colonial era through the present (Chapter 1); describe the fundamentally racist structure and operation of the officially “colorblind” contemporary U.S. drug war and mass imprisonment system (Chapters 2 and 3); detail how the new caste system operates on its black victims once they are released (on all too temporary a bases in many cases) from prison (Chapter 4); draw direct historical parallels between the old and the “new” Jim Crow (Chapter 5); and show how and why only a major new social movement (one that among other things “talks [candidly] about race” and “resists the temptation of colorblind advocacy”) can under the new caste order (Chapter 6).

I think Alexander's arguments dovetail with the themes that have been articulated on this blog. Communitarian politics have masked the growth of the new Jim Crow Prison State. Communitarian politics is unable to address the problem. The problem must be addressed by a radical new social movement that redefines the political categories.

Note, if Rand Paul actually was a libertarian, he could have countered the corporate liberal dementia of Rachel Maddow--and her mythology of Federal Power as an instrument of "progressive justice"--with more or less the same argument being made by Alexander, really an argument libertarians have been making for years. Rachel Maddow may be a professed skeptic on th War on Drugs, but she is the one holding contradictory thoughts in her head, existing in her own little la la land, spinning narratives of progressive federal power while refusing to acknowledge that the US Federal criminal Justice System is a thoroughly racist regime. And you can't advocate for ending the war on drugs while holding to the commerce clause as the great instrument of social engineering. You can't address the War on drugs without addressing the applicability of the commerce clause, because it is the legal sanction behind the New Jim crow.

The problem of radical social movements, which the likes of Alexander advocate, is that this is what the National security State is poised to thwart. Radical social movements aren't played out on the talking head squares of cable TV or in the policy rooms of Washington think tanks. They are carried out in the streets. And not politely, I may add. We are all well aware of the extent the federal law enforcement regime tired to infiltrate the social movements in the 60s. Well, now we have an honest to god real national security state apparatus. It is specifically designed to spy and infiltrate "movements," arrest them and parade their arrests on organs of official state media as means to spread fear and to discredit. The likes of Rachel Maddow reveled in promoting the great terrorism and national security threat poised by the "Tea Partiers," even hosted a MSNBC special to hype the threat of violence. Just imagine the terrorist hype that would accompany any radical social movement to protest the War on Drugs. People like Maddow are part of the problem. The National Security State at the service of and as an emergent property of communitarian politics is a thing to be dreaded....